American cities are in trouble. In the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns and rising crime and disorder, residents are fleeing urban areas, particularly New York City. The continuing looting and riots, especially, have sown feelings of deep insecurity. But some journalistic elites refuse to see reality — and are happy to mock those of us worried about recent trends.
“I went for a belated NYC run this morning and am sorry to report that I saw very few black-clad anarchists,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman sarcastically wrote in a multi-part tweet thread. He added: “Also, the city is not yet in flames.” Because you see, Krugman’s anecdotal claims trump what you see on the news every night.
Crime is out of control in Gotham. A two-week window this summer saw 205 percent more gunfire incidents than the same period last year. With four months left to go, the city has already surpassed last year’s shootings total.
But fact is, the troubles are contained in only certain areas. Of course, Krugman isn’t threatened. The blood isn’t staining sidewalks in the kind of hood the Nobelist calls home. Look at any Monday morning story about weekend violence. This weekend, it happened in The Bronx, Greenpoint, Rockaway.
Krugman and members of his social class have nothing to worry about. Their jolly experience proves nothing.
It isn’t just Krugman preening this way. A new meme on Twitter has upper-middle-class journalist types lounging in parks and posting pictures of how safe it is.
CNN correspondent Josh Campbell tweeted about eating his breakfast burrito in “wonderful Portland, where the city is not under siege, and buildings are not burning to the ground.”
It didn’t help that the night before a riot was declared in Portland after a mob marched on the mayor’s home and set a fire to a nearby building. Don’t believe your lying eyes, though: Josh Campbell is doing just fine.
And in DC, Washington Post journalist Dan Zak posted an idyllic scene at a park, writing: “Washington, DC, is simply out of control.”
Yes, it is. Mobs are confronting diners at restaurants and yelling in their faces to support their cause; shootings in DC are up 45 percent year on year. But everything is OK, because Zak had a nice morning in a park.
It’s an intense form of gaslighting to say, in effect: Everything is fine, because I personally didn’t witness the bad stuff. As many Twitter responses to Campbell and Zak pointed out, you can just as easily post a picture of an empty park and claim there is no police brutality or racism.
“It’s fine, because it isn’t happening to me” has been a hallmark of the entire lockdown era. When Nancy Pelosi gets her hair done in an otherwise closed hair salon, she gets to not notice that people aren’t working, and are suffering; either way, the House speaker’s hair looks fabulously coiffured.
I love New York, and I’m not going anywhere. When I read James Altucher’s essay about New York’s impending demise, and Jerry Seinfeld’s counterblast in the Times, I’m more inclined to agree with the latter. I don’t bet against the Big Apple.
But it’s hard not to notice Seinfeld wrote his “New York will never die” piece from the Hamptons. It would mean a lot more if he walked New York’s empty streets, saw the boarded-up windows, recognized the rampant homeless problem and acknowledged that there are vast swaths of the city actually suffering under a debilitating crime problem.
Loving New York, or any American city you call home, can’t mean pretending everything is honkey-dorey. Real love requires truth.
“Anyway, important to realize that claims of urban anarchy are almost entirely fantasy,” Krugman concluded his thread about his delightful run. Yes, those claims are a fantasy — when you live in the right neighborhood and don’t care about those who don’t.
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